While money for Iraq is bottomless, money for rebuilding infrastructure in the US goes wanting.

A year after the collapse of a Minnesota bridge killed 13 people, 150,000 U.S. bridges need to be repaired or replaced, and gasoline taxes are not providing nearly enough money to fix them, Gov. Rendell and state and local transportation officials said yesterday in Philadelphia.

Rendell released a new report by the group representing state highway officials that concluded it would cost about $140 billion to repair or replace every deficient bridge. And Rendell said the federal government should foot the bill.

Record gas prices, of course, have Americans trying to buy and use less. That in turn means less and less revenue from the 18.3 cents per gallon gas tax, and consequently less and less available for transportation infrastructure.

So it should come as no surprise that the Congressional effort to bolster the highway trust fund has been... blocked by Republican Senators, in this case Judd Gregg (R-NH) and Jim DeMint (R-SC), backed up by a threat from the veto crayon of George W. Bush himself.

How ironic that they'll be holding their convention at the site of the tragic collapse (not to mention the scene of Larry Craig's arrest).

I hope Minnesotans are prepared to adequately welcome these returning "drown it in a bathtub" heroes.

I'm a third generation Michigander, descendant of a Northern Michigan tribe, worked for a Michigan Congressman and am now an attorney.  My family lives all over Michigan, from Iron Mountain and Grand Marais in the north to Royal Oak and Rochester in the Detroit suburbs.  I very much care about the future of my home state.  But as I watch current events unfold I can only shake my head, ashamed of both our public officials and the citizens that elected these bums.  Let's review below the fold.

We have another bridge problem in the Twin Cities.  Yesterday, a roughly 6 ft by 9 ft by one inch sheet of concrete (1200 lb) fell off an overpass of a structurally deficient bridge and onto traffic below. No one was injured, but two cars were damaged.  One suffered a broken windshield.  Traffic backed up for miles as the bridge was inspected.  

"The main thing is the bridge is perfectly safe," said Dan Dorgan, state bridge engineer. "The structural capacity isn't affected."

That comment makes me feel really safe (snark).

It’s just about one year ago  that the I35W bridge that passed over the Mississippi River collapsed killing 13 people and injuring about 100 others.  This problem with the infrastructure occurs at a bad time for Tim Pawlenty, the clever Governor from Minnesota who thought he would save money by hiring his Lt. Governor, Carol Molnau, to be the Commissioner for the Department of Transportation as well as the Lt. Governor.  Molnau had little experience in transportation; her primary experience, in my view, was voting against legislation for public transportation.

The following are conceptual elements being submitted to the 2008 Democratic Platform through Barack Obama's "Listening to America" web utility, and to the 2008 Republican Platform via the RNC's Online Platform input system.  Neither party has a monopoly on new ideas; in fact, recently, at the party level, they both seem almost completely devoid of them.  Let us hope that Senators Obama and McCain, as both somewhat 'unconventional' candidates, can change that, in the final analysis.

While it is unlikely for the following to work its way through the various levels of active screening (or lack thereof) in either party to actually reach any of the policy wonks or K-Street hacks who will handcraft the two platforms, the formulation is a useful exercise nontheless.

This is not intended to be a comprehensive prescription to cure the nations ills, merely some supplemental thinking to address some of the most compelling priorities that are recognized across the political spectrum.  (more...)

A few weeks ago, for the fourth time in the past two years, I was driving in a major metropolitan area -- this time in New York City -- in a country with the world's largest economy, when I hit a massive divit in the roadway, maybe ten inches deep, that blew out my tire.

It was, of course, raining hard, as it tends to be when one gets a flat (I've long thought that Murphy was an optimist).

Last year, in the suburbs of DC -- the capitol of the country with the world's largest economy -- I hit a huge pothole, replaced my tire with the "doughnut" spare, and then blew that out in another Lake Michigan-sized pothole a few miles down the road. As the kids say: I shit you not.

Senators Obama and McCain plod along through political realignments, off-the-cuff slips of true feelings, and downright "disgraceful" remarks.  Congress balks at upholding even the most basic civil liberties, procrastinates on housing legislation, and puffs its chest with short-term fixes to a long-term oil problem.

Let's assume triangulating Democrats and screaming progressives don't screw it up for us, and Obama is elected the next president.

I feel strangely confident that this will occur.

But it's been widely noted that President Obama will be taking over a wounded nation; by what measure should we judge his ability to lead us towards a brighter future?

Many of us who are blogging at the Democratic Convention are banding together to produce an aggregated news magazine from the convention. It is being done as part of the  RootsWire project, which will aggregate blogs from different parts of the country.

We think this is an interesting collaborative project, which will pull together blog entries, photos, videos, and microblogging from the convention in one place. Please come visit us at the site, which is currently in Beta testing.

We are also asking that anyone who is blogging from the convention (credentialed or not) to contact us and participate in the project.

Steve Hanson
RootsWire.Org
Uppity Wisconsin

It is difficult to feel good this 4th of July given the mess the Bush/McCain Republicans have led this nation into. This year alone 438,000 people who lost their jobs. We are well into the Bush's SECOND recession (first president ever to preside over two recessions) with almost no recovery between them. We are officially in a bear market. Food prices are rising worldwide. Oil is at record highs suggesting Americans will have a very, very tough winter. The deficit is WAY above where it has ever been before and no end in sight. And I am not even going into the inept, idiotic and completely useless Bush/McCain Iraq war.

I will be attending the MoveOn.org Event: Day of Action for an Oil-Free President:

http://pol.moveon.org/...  

There are many of these events being organized throughout the country. 

This issue of Energy Economy Paradigms (old Oil/Hydrocarbon based vs. Renewable) is, in my considered opinion, THE CENTRAL ISSUE which will define whether we build a future of increasing: prosperity, security, and dignity for all; or descend into a zero-sum game; a MadMax style world of barbarity and increasing scarcity.

Ask yourself, and please consider with intellectual integrity, the following question:

Does a continued reliance on Hydro Carbon Resources, as the basis for our energy economy, represent a great risk to our national security?

You couldn’t be blamed for turning away from this title. After all, you probably read, listen to, or watch the news every day. In the last couple of days we’ve been reminded of more flooding in the Midwest, wildfires in California, the stock market’s continued decline, record prices for crude, the mortgage crisis with Congress tied in knots, and all of that is without mentioning Iraq or Afghanistan. If all of that is not enough to depress you, then maybe you need to see a psychiatrist, or else chuckle at Lord Acton’s words below.

If the title and recitation of recent headlines doesn’t turn you off, my lack of qualifications to write about them might. My training is in history and theology, not economics and engineering. But because of friend who is an engineer and financial observers like Joseph Lazzaro (a.k.a. "Hunter" on Kos), I decided that it was time more of us non-specialists need to try to grasp this larger economic picture. It seems to me that we are experiencing the first waves of several mini-catastrophes, the confluence of which would constitute a major one. These mini-catastrophes are all inextricably linked: war, a sick national and global economy, global warming, and a collapsing infrastructure.

Read on at your own risk.

All year long we have been subjected to an unending parade of frivolous, meaningless nonsense masquerading as "issues" in the Presidential campaign. The mainstream media repetitively parrots every bit of gossip conjured up and bats it back and forth between the candidates, to get their "reaction" to it, and that of their supporters, then the opinions of analysts as to how the gossip or their reaction to it or their supporters reaction to it will affect the campaign.  Why does this pass for news?

Perhaps this is to be expected of the same news channels that otherwise fill their airtime with the latest goings on of trashy bimbos in Hollywood, but often the more cerebral activist class gets drawn into discussing the same drivel. We should be propounding issues that matter.

Have you ever stopped to consider how some of the most mundane and boring policy changes might radically improve the world - and be enacted with a minimum of wailing and gnashing of teeth? (more...)

Strange week. Saw my first McCain ad this week...and it is clear he is running as a Democrat. Healthcare, alternative energy, environment...all Democratic talking points. We have gone from Democrats feeling like they have to run as Repub-Lite to Republicans trying to hide behind a Democratic facade. You even have a Republican running for Senate in Oregon trying to claim (falsely) that Obama supports him. This is desperation for the Republicans! It sounds like racist attacks have failed them, though I am sure they will try more as time goes on.

Meanwhile yet more polls show Obama ahead in Virginia and Missouri, tied in Florida, AHEAD IN INDIANA (wow!) and within 1-2 points of McCain in North Carolina, Alaska and Georgia. Each and every one of these states was solid Bush in 2004. Now they are either leaning Obama or effectively tied.

I've spent the last couple of days dealing with car trouble. A car's failing alternator, & having to deal with the dealership trying to find a part, has delayed work & publishing of all things "Irrelevant & Crap" until tomorrow night.

While wasting moments of my life in a dealership waiting room, I decided to spend the time talking to my Mother on the cell. So with all that's happening & all the issues in the world, she wanted to talk about the price of gas, other drivers, and roads. It's an issue that probably resonates more on a local level, but if you wanna get "Mama Rimjob" pissed off, just ask her about the quality of roads. My home state of Tennessee is the only place I've ever lived where the solution to a pothole was to put a 5 inch thick metal plate on the problem for vehicles to drive over at 60 mph, so TDOT (Tennessee Department of Transportation) can take their sweet ass time to fix it.

So with that in mind, it gave me an idea for a topic. Which state has the worst drivers and/or roads?

The floods in the Midwest have continued and I include some information where I can in the Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin sections. Best of luck to all readers in the hard hit areas.

This week I return to an issue I discussed before: Republican cronies litterally killing our troops with no government oversight. This week Democratic Sentor Bob Casey is demanding an investigation of the electrocutions due to bad wiring that have been plaguing our military bases managed by a Hallibruton subsidiary. More below.

Ever been to Padova?

OK, so McCain's magical plant is actually a typo.  But Obama finally got serious about sewage pipes.

SlyDi's recent diary about the national impact of the Midwest floods, has moved me to post a diary that I've been meaning to write for a number of days. SlyDi points out, among other things, that over the decades our nation has slowly destroyed what was once the greatest rail system in the world. And we're now paying the price for it.  The Midwest floods only highlight this self-inflicted crisis that will become more and more apparent...especially as gas prices continue to soar.

The Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT) and the trucking interests that it largely represents have been busily trying to write another sad chapter in this saga for the last several years.  ODOT has been working to build a huge, new highway through Oklahoma City. This ten-lane monstrosity is conveniently routed in such a way as to require the destruction of the old Union Station railyard, which might otherwise serve as a hub for rail transportation locally and throughout the state.

But now, thanks to the efforts of a group of citizen activists, the destruction has been put on hold.